From now until BB Day (that's "Bliar/Brown Day", what else?) in a few weeks' time, the press is going to be full of retrospectives, appreciations, critiques, eulogies and epitaphs about Tony Bliar and His achievements. Was He a great Prime Minister, was He a great reformer, was He a great statesman - or just a great pretender?
There's no doubt in our house. Bliar was a bloody awful Prime Minister, a meddling, muddling, interfering fiddler who was terrified of personal conflict so surrounded himself mainly with nonentities who wouldn't say boo to a goose, and then listened to their advice. He damaged this country even more than the last bloody awful Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher the Milk Snatcher, and lacked her political sense which told her, among other things, when it was time to go and how to do so gracefully.
For Jennie Bristow, writing on "spiked", Bliar's chief crime was against the family. "As a young person under Thatcher, at least you knew where you stood - you hated her, and you assumed that she hated you. Blair seems the opposite - a devoted daddy who wants to get down with the kids and help their parents, who professes to appreciate us and feel our pain. In reality, his reign has been a constant process of family-fiddling and therapeutic intervention, which has undermined parents and unsettled childhood.
Blair's government had been in office a mere year when it published the consultation document Supporting Families. The document's message was clear: for too long, it has been assumed that families are best left alone to live their lives in private. Now the state should become more involved - through processes called supporting, helping and advising families - to encourage people to live their lives in the right way.
Under New Labour, greater state involvement in everyday family life has intensified year on year. You can see this in the national database that effectively puts all children under state surveillance, in the routine use of parenting classes and the more punitive parenting orders, and in the Sure Start scheme which purports to be an anti-poverty childcare provision initiative but in reality is about sitting by the elbows of low-income parents and guiding them in the right way to bring up their kids
Parents under Blair are treated like irresponsible children, in need of constant guidance and monitoring by the state. Thatcher took away children's school milk, but at least she never demanded 'Let them eat carrot sticks', and sent the Obesity Special Branch to check the contents of their school lunchboxes. Given a hysterically high profile by the celebrity chef Jamie 'Parents Are Tossers' Oliver, the question of what children put into their mouths at breaktime is now considered of utmost political and educational importance. School prospectuses burble on about how keen they are to follow the government's healthy eating agenda and advise parents to ask themselves if their children really need a midmorning snack. Reports by Ofsted rate educational institutions on how well pupils are doing on their diet-and-exercise programmes and whether skinny-limbed kids come home refusing to eat their dinner because some teacher has told them that sausages are 'bad foods' and chips 'aren't healthy'.
Most parents are more concerned that their kids are eating enough than that they will turn into doughnuts, and we relish the enjoyment that children get out of eating the food they like. The Blair government's mean-spirited attitude to children's food is already poisoning the atmosphere around the dinner table and providing a bitter distraction from the fact that, when schools are not shoving the National Fruit Scheme down children's throats, they are filling their heads with junk. Yes, Thatcher messed about with the curriculum and got on the wrong side of most teachers, but she did not create a situation where calorie-counting was considered more important than maths.
In September 2006, Blair unveiled plans to identify and intervene in 'problem families' at the earliest possible stage, to prevent their children becoming criminals later on in life. The UK media branded the scheme 'fetal ASBOs'. This has also been a government that issues on-the-spot fines for all manner of trivial misdemeanours and sends parents to jail if their children play hooky from school. The politics of behaviour is promoted through a policy of 'Respect' - as though the long arm of the law is any way to get teenagers to respect anything."
And we are becoming used to the sight of police being called to sort out playground arguments, to arrest and caution children who are so immature as to say things that might be construed by adults as racist, and to do many of the things that in years gone by teachers were expected to do as a matter of course, and now dare not for fear of reprisals or legal action by bigoted parents.
And on his excellent Numberwatch, Professor Brignell also has a few cogent things to say …
"Blair suffered from the Genesis Delusion. He thought he merely had to say "Let there be X" and there would be X. He never quite cottoned on to the truth of Bismarck's dictum that "Politics is the art of the possible." It is the inevitable outcome of electing a leader who has never run anything, but no doubt the British will do it again ... this is the inevitable outcome of the youth and celebrity culture.
Hushing up the abandonment of sovereignty now provides a major part of government activity. All but the most trivial of Government actions originate in committee rooms in Brussels; yet ministers strenuously defend indefensible policies as if they were their own. For example, water providers are harangued for neglecting infrastructure, while they are required to comply with absurd and expensive EU directives. Unelected regional councils exert shadowy control, while unelected officials enforce the shackling of democratic local government.
One of the characteristics of this regime has been its utter contempt for the Parliamentary process. Sofa government leaves no audit trail and produces uninformed decisions. Serious politicians agonised about the West Lothian question; Blair just ignored it and consequently left a running sore in the body politic, encouraging Scots separatists to further extremes while building up resentment among the English.
He might have got away with it if he had demonstrated any degree of competence. Weak negotiating skills have been the hallmark of Government activity, with everyone from the EU diktatorialists to our own medical unions taking us for a ride. The Blair ritual of negotiation has become the national one. It requires a great show of initial bravado with declarations of how you are not going to give way, followed by a coda demonstrating why giving way was only rational and what you really wanted to do all the time. The classical example was over Britain's increased contribution to the EU spending spree. One of Blair's greatest failures, however, is in not standing up to the man next door. Brown has scuppered many genuine attempts at reform, while continually extending his Treasury empire.
Fraud has become endemic. Ten years ago electoral fraud was unknown in Britain. Widespread voting fraud is now acknowledged, all just to gerrymander a few more votes for the governing party.
The most defining characteristic of the regime is its insatiable hunger for numbers. There is no aspect of the culture that has not been sacrificed to it. The statistics industry is the most prolific of modern times. A significant proportion of the working population is engaged in fiddling the figures, in healthcare, education and policing, just to name the most obvious cases. The very existence of targets and league tables ensures that the numbers that go into them bear no resemblance to reality. Numerical falsehood has never been more profitable.
This is also the new age of The Snoopers. The post war Labour Government was thrown out largely because of Winston Churchill's successful campaign against The Snoopers, but those were the days when we had real opposition. The Snoopers are just one example of a whole new swathe of wage parasites who are sucking the life out of a wilting economy, while a diminishing band of wealth creators struggle to keep it going.
It has become a cliché that Orwell wrote a warning but Blair read it as an instruction manual. Pro rata for population Britain has more surveillance cameras than any other country in the world. Miniature hidden cameras are now in place to detect "envirocrime" - yet another Orwellism. A new parasitic army of anti-smoking snoopers will be armed with digital cameras. There are now over 250 justifications for officials to intrude forcefully on an Englishman's home, which was so recently his castle.
What were once supposed to be the happiest days of our lives have now become a nightmare for teachers and children alike - all tests and preparation-for-tests to feed the relentless appetite. The state is now building giant child-processing units without even a playground to relieve the monotony. Functional illiteracy and innumeracy are rife among those emerging from this nightmare. Increasing numbers are opting out to form gangs of feral youth that further blight the British experience. Academic standards in school and university exams have reached a farcical low. Apart from the cultural damage, it is slow economic suicide.
The inhumanity with which New Labour treats the young is only exceeded by its savagery towards the old. Elderly people live in a state of permanent anxiety. They experience a rate of increase of cost of living that greatly exceeds the fraudulent index used by the Government so, however they start out, they experience a steady annual decline in their standard of living. The five-billion-a-year pensions raid was one of the most truly wicked acts of any government in history. People who made sacrifices to ease their life's end have had their savings simply stolen. They look with envy at those who fecklessly spent all their income having a good time. It is a dreadful cliché to apply the epithet "obscene" to a sum of money, but what other term is adequate for the Prime Minister's pension fund? There has been nothing like it since the days of the robber barons of the Rhine. Less fortunate pensioners dread that final illness, which the Government will exploit to take away their savings and then their homes. They face ending their lives in ghastly "care" homes, where if they are lucky they will only be neglected and not bullied or starved. Their spouses are left stranded and unwanted. The poorest of all are trapped in the serpentine coils of the Means Test.
Political correctness rules. Smoking is banned on the basis of falsified data about imaginary deaths, while filthy hospital lavatories are tolerated, condemning thousands of real people to horrible deaths. Patients suffer the indignity of mixed-sex wards and inedible food. A hospital bed is now one of the most dangerous places to be in Britain. Now one of the biggest fears is falling ill out of hours. A ramshackle and astonishingly expensive system, supposed to replace the traditional doctor's visit, is fraught with delay and failure.
Only 2.5% of police are assigned to "response duties". The rest spend their time filling in forms. To meet their numerical targets they pick on soft targets and neglect serious but more difficult crimes. Criminals roam the country stealing at will whatever they fancy. Virtually no one bothers to report a crime any more, unless they need a crime number for insurance purposes, which ensures that crime statistics are total nonsense. Yet they are still trotted out by ministers.
In June 1997 Prescott, Blair's ever ludicrous deputy, declared: "I will have failed in five years time if there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It's a tall order, but I urge you to hold me to it." He failed.
The foot and mouth holocaust is, unbelievably, all but forgotten. As an example of the arrogance and obstinacy of politicians leading to mind-boggling cruelty it is unparalleled. Not only did more than 7 million hapless animals go to unnecessary deaths in the most appalling circumstances, but thousands of rural businesses (not only farms but the likes of hotels and even hot-air-balloon manufacturers) went to the wall. The most cynical episode of all, however, was the way it was all swept under the carpet with the connivance of the establishment media, for the sake of Blair's successful campaign for re-election.
For older Britons one of the most painful experiences of modern life is to see their once proud nation held up to ridicule. Ten years ago we used to laugh at California as the home of politically correct absurdity. Now the world laughs at us for the same reason. It is all exemplified by the Australian website Eye on Britain with its subtitle 'Stories from a very strange place'.
The best you can say in Blair's favour is that he meant no harm. His crime was insouciance. For a politician he exhibited relatively little malice. Now Brown is another matter entirely.
P.S. (Don't mention the war)"
The GOS says: Glad to hear that Professor Brignell uses Eye on Britain. We visit there daily ourselves - much quicker than actually reading the papers, and John Ray is indefatigable in searching out all the absurd and unfair things that happen in this once-fair island.
Just been on a little trip to Wales to see relatives and on the way back spent an afternoon on the Severn Valley Railway. Being midweek, all the passengers were pensioners. And almost all the staff were elderly volunteers, too. The result? The whole thing worked like clockwork, peace and quiet reigned throughout, people were pleasant and polite to each other, the staff were knowledgeable, cheerful, relaxed and helpful, nobody dropped litter or got drunk, and the whole occasion was a delight.
So, Tony Bloody Bliar, I think I've just hit on the great secret you were seeking but never found. To create an effective, civilised society, build a damn great wall round five or six of our least pleasant major cities, lock everyone under 50 in there, and the rest of us can get on with our lives in peace.
Brilliant.
P.S. Or what about Scotland? I mean, there's most of a wall already ...
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